Thoughts and observations by English poet Roger N. Taber, a retired librarian & poet-novelist.- "Colour, creed, sex, sexuality... these are but part of a whole. It is the whole that counts." RNT [NB While I have no wish to create a social network, I will always reply to emails. Contact: rogertab@aol.com].

Friday, 3 May 2013

Cascade OR Rediscovering Nature

Some readers
who link to my YouTube channel think 'too much' background noise detracts
from the poems I read. While I take their point, it is unavoidable when filming
outdoors with my (cheap) camcorder. There is no way to subdue all background
noise without killing the reading. For me, reading outdoors brings the poem to
life. Moreover, the location often relates to the poem. For example, I wanted
to readAutobiography of a
Beachwhere I began to write
it, on Bournemouth beach.

Latterly, anyone
who has ever dipped into my You Tube channel will have seen that I have started
reading poems over the video, thereby reducing background distractions since I
record the poem in the relative peace and quiet of my London flat. This appears
to work quite well and I will probably do this in future. I suspect it would have been better to start
off this way, but my best friend (and cameraman) Graham and I are only amateurs
and did not hit on the idea until we discovered that we had a growing audience.
We intend to record more videos/poem later this year as and when time allows:

Someone close
to me was a keen gardener and loved the seasons. When she lay in hospital
dying, she told me not to be afraid. “There’s really nothing to be afraid of.
Nervous, perhaps, but who isn’t nervous of change? As for being afraid, though, no one with a passion
of spring need ever be afraid of winter.”

CASCADE

In the
dark of night I stumbled along

the
lonely, winding passages of birth,

let moon,
stars and love’s sweeter song

lure me
into the killing fields of Earth

By history’s
first light, I’d dried my tears

(said to
make all who nurture us proud)

by noon,
I’d joined a stream of refugees

fallen
foul of some scapegoat of a God

In the
twilight of my years, I found peace,

no thanks
to a world obsessed with terror,

letting a
cascade of spring’s finer joys

absorb tears
long shed for a bad winter

Where
death lets us free-fall back to nature,

in love’s
cascade, we’ll sing, shine, forever

Copyright R. N. Taber 2005; 2013

[Note: An
earlier version of this poem appears in A
Feeling For The Quickness Of Time by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books,
2005; 2nd (revised) e-edition in preparation.]]

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About Me

A gay man. Born in Gillingham, Kent (UK) Dec. 21st 1945. Graduated with BA Hons.(Class 2/1) in English & American Literature, the University of Kent in Canterbury, summer 1973.

Some 700+ poems have appeared in poetry publications worldwide since 1993, excluding any that only appear in my collections.

Better known as a poet, my first novel - 'Blasphemy' was published in the USA, October 2006 ; it is Book 1 of a planned trilogy and was also distributed in the UK & the rest of Europe. Book 2 - 'Sacrilege' -was self-published and only on sale in the UK or on the Internet. [Book 3 - 'Redemption' - has been delayed due to illness. (I have prostate cancer.) Other novels have not yet found an agent/ publisher but are serialised on my fiction site.